Fig 1. Philadelphia: one of the cities where people actually know how to cross the street.The red eye was the worst flight of my life. I'll save the details for a silly drinking game far in the future. I spent the entire day recovering from that flight, which leads me to believe that I might as well just fly early friday morning, since either way I'm not going to do much in philly until 9 or 10 pm.
Friday: The Rum Bar
There is a bar in philly with an entire menu of rum drinks that doesn't serve beer. It is the greatest thing ever--not so much because I love rum (I do) but because I don't like hearing my friends bitch about me always drinking rum, and I am sick and tired of people ordering a pitcher of beer/cider and asking me, again, if I'm allergic to beer, and I am also sick and tired of walking into a bar in Seattle and finding out that they don't serve any liquor. And then, half the time they don't even have my safety beer, the Corona. And there is nothing I can do about it--except announce that I just love miller lite and watch the beer nerds cringe.
Well, they should all come to this rum bar with me in the great city of Philadelphia, and when they can't get their lame ass lauger that nobody's heard of they'll know how I feel. Freakin seattle. What kind of city has separate licenses for beer and liquor? Anyway.
At this rum bar, Matt told me to get some kind of super spiced mojito. It was the spiciest thing I've ever tasted. I'm pretty sure that drink, and all of the animated storytelling I did later, is what killed my voice for the rest of the weekend.
Another cool thing about the rum bar? Walking distance from the hotel in center city I usually stay at.
This paragraph is the original beginning of the friday section. We had to push it back so I could tell you how much I love the rum bar. This was my one social night. Almost none of my college friends could make it, so it was pretty much all high school friends, and the one girl I had been trying not to look forward to seeing too much. There was some kind of drama I don't care about between her and my high school friends, so she didn't sit with them. I asked her to come over and sit with us and she said she was leaving. I asked her to stay, because I wanted to make out with her later. Then she and her friend got really bitchy and said she had a boyfriend. Probably true. I was sad. I said goodbye. I found out later this was the wrong response. I don't know what I did wrong this time. Girls don't value honesty as much as they say they do.
Saturday: the wedding!
I woke up alone and with a cracked voice. Wandered around center city until I found a car rental place that had a car available. I got...a new Ford Taurus. This is one of the worst designed cars I've ever seen. First, the thing is enormous. I'm not even sure if it fits in terrestrial parking spaces. Second, when you get inside? There is very little room. They managed to make a car that is very big on the outside, and very tiny on the inside. Third, there is almost no visibility. The windows are tiny and you get a horrible angle of sight and checking your blind spot is close to guesswork. I surmised from the boatlike feel of the suspension that this is perhaps meant to be a car for old people. That, or it was intended for people that suck at driving, and all that mass is there to protect you from everything you're going to run over.
Despite the shortcomings of my rental, it was quite pleasant to cruise around my favorite highways (422 and 76) listening to whats left of philly's rock stations. I <3 Y100.
Yeah...I had this whole big story in here about the wedding, and this girl I met at the wedding. It took like 45 minutes to write. But then google accidentally deleted it because I typed in a <3 without escaping the <. Ironically, I can't think of a single part of that story that anyone else needs to know. The wedding afterparty was at a cool bar though.
Sunday: the family
I got to play legos with my nieces. The elder one, who had previously shown little aptitude for these wonderful little bricks, surprised me with her creativity by putting a space glowy thingy on a pirate mast and calling it a lamppost. Then we built a town, just like I did when I was younger. Top left, there, thats a castle. My niece decided that a princess lived there, and promptly collected all of the male minifigs, armed them, and set them about the castle, declaring that they were guarding the princess. Oh, and the little house with the red roof, that was made by my older sister.
My other niece made this castle. I think its a castle. The blue is definitely water. I think it is an island castle, or at least an island house.
I am unable to pay attention to both of them at once--not when legos are involved. I have perhaps tens of thousands of individual lego pieces and I recognize every one.Monday: lunch
I had to return my car in the morning, because of how Avis does business, and my flight was not until that night, so I had lunch with Holly, and then hung out with Nicole for the afternoon. Then we met up with Holly again. Holly and Nicole decided to go get manicures, and I should go with them. I really, really had nothing to do. I mean, I took that picture up top. Anyway, so it didn't hurt. And I have to admit my nails do look nicer now that there aren't bits of skin flailing all over the place. The experience was still too femenine for my tastes, and the asian girl doing my nails seemed quite amused when she found out that niether of the girls I was with was my girlfriend, and in fact they were both nearly engaged/married. I pondered this during my nap while the girls were drying their nail paint.
In terminal A of the Philadelphia airport, I found this:
Pretty cool.Epilogue
The trip was awesome. As usuall, at the end of it I found my self physically exhausted but mentally refreshed. I wish that I could go back there more often. I'm gonna look into it sometime. Whatever happens, it is definitely a great thing to be able to step out of your normal life for a while and just take a breather. I need more of these.
Wednesday: The 172S!
I almost forgot! Tonight was my checkout flight for the Cessna 172S. I spent all last night furiously studying, instead of doing important things like laundry. Whatever. You see, I normally fly the Cessna 172P. The Cessna 172S has a slightly more powerful engine. Picture a bunch of turtles, and imagine that one of them regularly trains for the 100 meter dash. That turtle is the Cessna 172S. So, I am now "checked out" in it, which means nothing legally, but does mean that my flying club will now allow me to rent the S model,. The next time that all of the Cessna 172Ps are taken, the 172S might still be available. Also, as a result of tonight, I got to fly around with an instructor and am now confident that even after more than a month of not flying, my skills are still fairly sharp, and we worked out some of the kinks with my landings.
I am moving up the flying food chain. Next up, perhaps in a few months: learning to fly a plane with retractable landing gear.
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